MX5 Soft Top Saga Video

This Mazda MX5 came to us for a hood clean and ended up have water leaks repaired and some paint correction on the door.

It is not uncommon for cars to come to us for a soft-top clean and for us to find water leaks. It is also not uncommon for people to have their roofs made like new and then decide they would like to spruce up the rest of the car. And it often happens with MX5s and within the space of a couple of months this happened no less than five times. Three of the MX5s were black too! So we don't publish videos on all the cars we do because it would get a bit repetitive, but this one serves as an illustration of the kind of work we do.

At first the car came to us for a hood clean, it had been done before but not done well. So we cleaned in the gaps, flushed the drains, conditioned the rubbers and re-weatherproofed the roof. Easy job.

While working on the car we found a lot of mould on the headlining and the carpets were wet. This is not something that surprises us as Mazda MX5s are notorious for leaking from the rear brake light, clips on the scuttle, plus they suffer all the same problems as any other car such as leaking door membranes. Cars of a certain age tend to spring leaks, and as MX5s are wonderful, people tend to keep them for years.

This car was particularly effected by mould which was covering large areas of the headlining. Leaking cars often get a bit of mildew, and if you find it, or even smell it, you should get your car decontaminated because breathing in mould and mildew spores can make you very ill, leading to sinus infections and bronchitis. Your car is a small enclosed box and the amount of mould spores in the air can build up, so it should be taken seriously. 

We cleaned and reproofed the hood on the first visit. On the second visit we repaired the leaks, decontaminated the mould and dried the car.

There was also a scuff on the door which required paint correction, and we did a cosmetic repair on what was left. In cases like this you can often polish out most of the scratches and any that have gone through the paint can be touched in with a close match paint. The results aren't perfect, but it's far cheaper than repainting the door and then fading into the wings.  That would involve all three panels and mean essentially repainting the whole side of the car, which would have been very costly. You can see in the video that the car also has a few door-dings which the customer could have done with paintless dent repair at a later visit.

As previously mentioned, we had a few cars like this one come in at around the same time, one of them came in for a roof clean and reproof and went out having been polished and treated with a ceramic coating. Many customers decide that while they are getting their roof made like new again, they may as well do the rest of the car.